How did the United States exert politico-economic hegemony on the different countries of Chile and Guatemala, and why did the restoration of US hegemony result in a paradigm shift of US foreign policy? An analysis of the aims, methods and impact of US counterrevolutionary practices in two countries and time periods.

Abstract

This investigation aims to bridge the historiographical gap that exists in the study of the Guatemalan US backed coup ‘d’état that toppled Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954, and the US backed coup ‘d’état in Chile that toppled Salvador G. Allende in 1973. Historiography has shunned comparisons between these cases due to the time differential and the extent to which the countries present contrasting socio-political and economic elements for historical comparison. In doing so, US foreign policy shifts have often been divorced in scholarship from the coups from which they originated. This investigation contends that both 1954 and 1973 cases identify the ushering of a new foreign policy paradigm (with respect to Latin America mostly) based on the exertion of hegemony, and constructed according to the international political climate, which in turn was informed by cold war developments that create different international paradigms in the two cases. These inform the differences in the method of restoring hegemony, after revolutionary governments have weakened it.